1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to wireless communication systems and in particular to wireless communication systems for personalized mobility management of wireless services.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of information services for wireless communication devices such as one and two-way pagers and cellular telephones, a device user may carry a device capable of receiving and accessing a large volume of data. Additionally, with improved memory capability of the wireless communication devices, the device can store a large volume of messages.
It is useful in many wireless communication systems, for example paging and cellular systems, to know the location of the wireless communication devices that are operating within the wireless communication system. The location or position information of the wireless communication devices for example can be used for registration and directed delivery of messages to the wireless communication devices or to locate a device user in case of an emergency situation.
Conventional schemes for locating wireless communication devices determine only a current location for the wireless communication device. For example, a conventional wireless communication system can use direction-finding equipment at each base station site in order to fix the location of the wireless communication device. The current location is computed by triangulation when two or more transmitter base stations receive the same signal. The disadvantage to this system is that the wireless communication device is required to transmit for long time periods at high power levels in order to enable accurate measurements of angles by the transmitter base stations. Such high power and long duty cycle transmissions would not be effective for small wireless communication device applications such as two way pagers and cellular telephones due to the battery life loss.
As part of a wireless communication service, there are adjunct servers that provide information and other content services to device users that have their content configured according to personalized preferences, system generated information, and the wireless communication device generated information. Location based services are typically application limited due to the hardware, software, and networks required to support the ability to locate a mobile object and then communicate the unit""s location back to a control point where the location information is utilized by a server. The server provides location based functions based on the needs of the particular application.
The most common location based applications prior to the integration of sophisticated location system data becoming available in wireless communication devices include vehicle fleet management (location of trucks, speed, direction, in/out of bounds, off route, traffic/accident avoidance, stolen vehicle recovery), asset tracking (used primarily for large freight containers, container location, customer delivery information), maps (a useful location based service is the delivery of maps for finding streets, addresses, businesses, location information is supplied by the system about the user""s position and then this information is utilized to send the appropriate maps of the area), and localized information services (information services optimized for a location, cell or regional basis, cellular or paging, weather, traffic, events, now becoming specialized to restaurants, shopping, services).
Additionally, the recent introduction of content information services provides a new method of communicating a large amount of information to a large number of people at a relatively low cost. However, content information may be relevant only to a device user who either has entered or is about to enter a certain location, and not relevant when the user is located elsewhere.
What is needed is a wireless communication system and method for selecting relevant content information from the large amount of communicated content information on the basis of a future location of the device user. What is further needed is a system and method to dynamically update position and time information in order to make a judgment on the direction and speed of the mobility of the device user by sampling the position at different intervals. Once the system understands this location, speed and direction, its services can be tailored accordingly.